Timescape (15 page)

Back in the hall, he eyed the fallen walls. Footprints were in the dust, but they could have been from last night, when all of them had gone upstairs. Still . . . that catchphrase of Han Solo's came to mind:
I got a bad feeling about this
. Xander had used it when they'd first found the house.

Should've trusted the feeling then,
David thought.
Should trust it now.

“Dad!” he called. He could hear Dad, Keal, and Toria talking in the kitchen. “Dad!” He walked over the walls and stopped at the bottom of the stairs. “Xander, you up there?”

Just a look
, he told himself, going up. The lights were on in the crooked, third-floor hallway. “Xander, are you—”

“Here!” Xander's voice came at him from one of the antechambers.

“Xander? Where are you?”

Xander stepped out of a room at the far end of the hall. “Come here,” he said. “Quick.” He disappeared again.

“Wait!” David said. “What are you doing?” He looked down the stairs. He could no longer hear the conversation from the kitchen. “Dad!” he called as loudly as his lungs could push the word out.

“David!” Xander was back in the hall. “Will you just come here for a second? Look at this?”

Reluctantly, David started for him. Xander ducked into the room.

When David reached the open antechamber, Xander was putting on a hat. No, not a hat, David realized. A
helmet
.

“What are you
doing
?” David said.

“This is it,” Xander said. “The place Jesse was trying to tell us about.”

David looked at the items still hanging from the hooks, a pair of tattered leather lace-up slippers on the bench. “How do you figure?”

Xander pointed to the helmet. It was a battered thing that looked like it had been pieced together from scraps of metal. “What does this look like?”

“A helmet,” David said. “The last time you put one on, you went to the Roman Colosseum. You almost got yourself killed.”

“David!” Xander said, exasperated. He snatched off the helmet and held it upside down. At the front, the two metal pieces were bent up, as though they had caught a fierce blow and didn't quite break off. Xander used his finger to trace the arc of the helmet, then the two squarish metal plates. “Jesse's drawing,” he said. “The thing you said looked like buck teeth.”

David squinted at it. “I don't know,” he said slowly.

“And look.” Xander pointed to the corner of the room, where a weapon rested on the bench, its handle propped up into the corner. “An ax! I told you the symbol was an ax. And
this
. . .” He resettled the helmet over his head and pulled a leather pouch off a hook. He shook a couple medallions out into his palm. He turned one over and held it up to David. “What does that look like?”

“A house,” David said. It was engraved into the medallion.

“All three of the symbols Jesse left for us,” Xander said.

“This has to be it.”

David wasn't so sure. He said, “But the helmet . . . Xander, why didn't he draw a helmet and not just a curve with two squares?”

“He was injured,” Xander said. “He drew only what would help us distinguish this helmet from any other. I've never seen anything like it before, have you?”

David shook his head. “So, what? You're just going over?”

“If we leave now, the world might be gone when we get back. It was important enough for Jesse to use his own . . .” He frowned. “To use his own blood to get the message to us.”

“Wait here,” David said. “I'll go get Dad.”

“He'll say, ‘Let's do it after school,' ” Xander said. He tied the pouch to his belt. Then he leaned past David and picked up the ax. “It could be now or never. I say now.”

“This isn't right, and you know it!” David leaned into the hallway. “Dad! Dad! Toria! Keal!”

A chilly wind blew over him, carrying bits of hay or grass.

Xander had opened the door. He was standing in front of the portal, one hand on the edge of the door, the other holding the ax. His hair coming out from under the helmet fluttered in the breeze. On the other side, the wind must have been more severe; David could hear it howling.

“Xander, wait!” David yelled. “You don't know what's over there!”

Xander looked over his shoulder. “Jesse's not going to send us someplace dangerous, Dae.”

He would have if he thought it would help us find Mom
, David thought. But that would make Xander even more determined. Instead he said, “An ax and a helmet? Come on!”

He wanted to reach for Xander, grab his waistband, and tug him back away from the portal. But his brother was bigger and stronger. He could easily shake David loose. Or worse: pull him through with him. The thought struck him hard.

He said, “I talked to Jesse. He said we should stay together. Xander, maybe this is what he meant.”

Xander smiled. “Then come on.”

“No, not like this,” David pleaded. “Let's get Dad, then I'll go with you. Please.”

“Now or never, Dae.”

“Dad!” David yelled again into the hallway.

“Go get him,” Xander said.

David felt relief washed over him. And with Xander's next words, it was gone, chased away by sickening fear.

Xander said, “I'll meet you over there. Come when you're ready.”

“No! Wait!” David was certain this was what Jesse had meant: not that this was the place he wanted them to go, but that they had to stay together—now. “I'll go,” he said.

He turned to the items left on the hooks and the bench. He could have followed Xander through without selecting his own, but if they did get separated, he'd have nothing to guide him to the portal home. He grabbed a silver bracelet and slipped it onto his wrist. It was way too big. He moved it to the other arm and pushed it snugly over the bandage Dad had wrapped around his cast. He pulled down a spool of yarn wrapped around a wooden dowel. He sat on the bench, kicked off his sneakers, and tugged on the slipperlike shoes.

Cinching the laces tight, he glanced at Xander. “Do you smell smoke?”

Xander sniffed. “No.” Then he did something that shook David to his bones. He waved and fell backward through the portal.

Just as he had in David's dream.

CHAPTER
thirty - two

David belly flopped onto hard-packed earth. His cheek smacked down, and so did his broken arm—of course. Didn't going through the portals
always
result in jarring the part of his body that hurt the most? The pain flared up into his shoulder like fire.

He groaned and rolled onto his back, hugging his cast. He spat dirt out of his mouth. It was in his eyes too. He rubbed them and blinked. Above him was a ceiling made of branches, twigs, and straw. Thatch, he thought it was called. Glancing around, he saw that he was in a cottage of sorts: plank walls; a stone fireplace that appeared to have been cobbled together by a child; table, chairs, and bed frame, all made from roughhewn logs. Tools, clothes, wooden goblets were among the litter scattered around him.

He rubbed his shoulder, then his arm. Holding his cast above him, he gave the bracelet a good look. It was designed to resemble a coiled snake. Its head was wide and flat, its eyes wicked. Two fangs jutted out of an open mouth.

Great
, he thought. Not exactly a peaceful symbol. What had his brother gotten them into?

Beside him, Xander was pushing himself into a sitting position. He moaned and said, “Rough landing.”

David rolled onto his side and punched Xander in the ribs, hard.

“Oww!” Xander yelped. “What was that for?”

Not ten minutes ago, Toria had asked David that same thing, but it was because he had given her a hug. “For being stupid,” David said. “For breaking your promise to Dad that you wouldn't sneak into the other worlds anymore. For making me come with you. For—”

“Hey, I didn't make you do anything.”

“Right, Xander,” David said. He hoisted himself off the ground. “I'm going to just let you go alone. After Jesse said we should say together. You could have waited five minutes for Dad.”

“Five minutes?” Xander said. He stooped to pick up the ax. He touched his head, and David saw the helmet had come off. Xander looked around for it. “More like eight hours. Then it could have been gone.”

David punched him again.

“Stop hitting me!” Xander shoved him.

David tripped and went down on his butt. “That was for going over like you did,” he said. “Waving and falling backward. What was that?”

Xander smiled and shrugged. “That's the way scuba divers go into the ocean, backward off the boat. I figured, why not? We usually wipe out when we come over anyway. What's the big deal?”

David shook his head. “Never mind.” He turned to look out through an open door at rolling meadows and a woods in the distance. The nippy breeze he had felt coming through the portal was now coming through the cottage door. “Where are we?”

“Don't know,” Xander said. “Hey.” He pointed at his helmet on the ground. It was rolling toward the doorway. “And isn't that yours?”

The spool of yarn. David hadn't realized he'd dropped it. It was heading for the door as well.

“Are they heading for the portal home?” David said. “So soon?”

Xander darted forward and snatched up the two items, which had almost met each other on their way out. He handed the spool to David.

David watched as a length of yarn lifted and fluttered against the breeze. It pointed at the door. He said, “I thought the longer we're here, the stronger the pull. I haven't felt it so soon before.”

“Maybe we're not supposed to be here,” Xander said.

“What? You say that
now
?” If he weren't sitting on the ground, David thought he might have punched him again.

“You said, ‘This is the place! This is it!' ”

“It still may be where Jesse wants us to be,” Xander said.

“But maybe Time doesn't.”

David sighed and said, “We don't know enough to be doing this.”

“This is how we learn.” Xander extended a hand to him.

David glared at him.

Xander said, “I'm sorry, okay? I just want to rescue Mom so badly, and I'm afraid we're running out of time. It drives me crazy, all the waiting and preparing, sleeping and keeping up appearances. I just want to go for it, you know?”

“You're right about one thing,” David said, grabbing his brother's hand. “You are crazy.”

Xander leaned down to push on the bed's mattress. It was straw with a loose covering of stitched-together animal hides. He said, “You won't say that if we find what Jesse wants us to find. Maybe it's the key to everything, something that will help us rescue Mom, save the world, and get out of that house once and for all.”

“I doubt it,” said David. “If there was something like that, he would have told us before. I think it'll help us, but not solve all our problems.”

Xander said, “You never can—”

“Shhhh,” David said. “Hear that?”

He realized that what he'd thought was the sound of wind from the other side of the portal was actually voices. A chorus of screaming voices. Over them, like the cracking of a whip, were sharp, high-pitched shrieks. They rose, then broke into stuttering laughter.

David's skin went cold. He turned big eyes to Xander. “What
is
that?”

Xander shook his head.

“And I
definitely
smell smoke,” David told him. He could see it now as well. Gray swirls came through the door and began to gather into a cloud, away from the gustiness outside. He moved closer to Xander and grabbed his arm. “I don't think Jesse would send us to a place where people scream like they're being torn apart and something's on fire.”

Xander moved toward the door. David clung to his arm, shuffling behind him. They stepped out of the cottage. The screaming pierced David's ears; the smoke stung his nostrils. He swept his gaze over the hills and woods. Then he saw a towering stone building, a castle. It was a couple of hundred yards away. Beyond it, an ocean.

The two boys edged to the corner. More thatch-roofed cottages dotted the landscape in a sweeping arc behind the one into which the portal had deposited him and Xander.

The cottages were arranged in a crescent around the castle, on one side of it and behind it. Theirs was the last one in line.

Thank goodness for that much of a break
, David thought—for all but the closest cottages were blazing, their straw roofs feeding huge fires, like flaming hair on wood faces. People were yelling and running: some into the hills and woods farther from the castle, some toward the fortress. But by far, a greater number of people had already fallen: their bodies pocked the field between the cottages and castle as though a giant hand had scattered them like seeds.

A roar of voices rose up some distance away.

“It's some kind of siege on the castle,” Xander said. “Probably from the sea. The front of the castle's on the other side. These are just the peasants' huts.”

“If the assault is on the other side,” David said, “what happened here? What killed those people?”

As he spoke, a man broke from one of the cottages. He ran toward the castle as though demon dogs were on his scent. In the next instant, David saw the thing that was after the man, and it turned out to be much worse than mere demon dogs.

A beast sprang from between two cottages. It was tall, with the head of a wolf and the body of a bear. It loped on its hind legs. It carried a sword as thick and long as an arm. The thing bellowed, howled, and barked as it went after the running man.

David screamed. It felt as though his organs compressed within his body, pulling in for safety.

Xander clamped his hand over David's mouth. “Shhhh,” he said. “He hasn't spotted us.” He dropped down and yanked on David's shirt.